Tara Fowler and Vivian Hale passed a sour-looking girl with wavy chestnut hair about their age whose sullen eyes moved from their evening-cast shadows to meet Vivian with a glare. As Tara observed the nasty look given by the girl, she was thankful that Vivian was a wall between the two of them on the park path. Tara watched the girl's hands with cautious eyes, seeing if one would reach into the pocket that bulged ever so slightly. What she kept in the pocket was something Tara felt better not knowing.
The girl's eyes did not falter from their lock on Vivian even as they passed. Tara and Vivian both checked over their shoulders to ensure that the girl was not plotting to reveal the contents within her pocket and use it on their backs. Tara found her staring once more at their shadows, and she checked for any lost treasures lost within the wind-swept grass. However, she saw nothing of interest and found that the girl had seemed to have lost interest in their shadows as well, for she stood staring at the massive flat field, as if searching for something.
“What's her problem?” Tara asked Vivian, who had yet to remove her gaze from the girl.
“Probably looking to scare us, trying to look big and bad,” Vivian guessed while shifting her eyes back to the path before them. “You know how some people are.”
“Did you see the way she looked at our shadows?”
“Yeah, I noticed,” Vivian said. “She was probably checking to see if we were hiding weapons behind our backs or something.”
Tara glanced over her shoulder again to see the girl as a featureless mannequin garbed in two colors. “I'm glad you were here, because I'm not sure how I would have handled her.”
Vivian planted her hand on Tara's right shoulder and reeled her in. “Hey, that's what friends are for, right? You do all of the searching, and I make sure nobody even thinks of laying a finger on you.”
Tara chuckled nervously and freed herself from Vivian's arm. “So, do you really think there's a Celestial Flower here?”
“Of course!” Vivian said with the utmost confidence. “I can feel it in my bones.” She rapped her manubrium with the joints of her fingers. “I've never been wrong about this, have I?”
“Well, no, but we haven't searched for any out here before.” Tara's eyes trailed the horizon, which possessed no visible markers of civilization beyond the erected playground, picnic areas, and fence posts setting up the perimeter of the distant parking lot. She could hear the faint rush of wind cast by the cars on the highway, but the park seemed to be in its own bubble of reality.
Five fingertips grasped the top of Tara's head like the claw of a crane game and twisted her head toward the forest encompassing the park field. “And we're not searching out here,” Vivian said.
Tara furrowed her brow and swatted Vivian's hand away while saying, “In the forest?”
“That's where I'm sensing it.”
“This one will make twenty...six?”Tara lifted her fingers as if using them to count, though it was more for show.
“Sounds about right,” Vivian affirmed. “I'm surprised you're counting.”
“I do want to know how much of an impact I'm making, you know,” Tara said.
“You're contributing wonderfully,” Vivian said, and rubbed Tara's hair.
Tara pushed her hand away and sidestepped into the grass for a second so that she was out of reach of Vivian's longer arms. As Tara fixed her hair with her fingers, she said, “Am I? Because when I think about how many Flowers we've burned in the city alone, I wonder if we're really helping.”
The path forked, one trail circling around the perimeter of the forest, the other penetrating its depths. Vivian led Tara onto the left fork toward the forest.
“Trust me, Tara: we're not the only ones seeking these things out. There are organizations dedicated to finding these things.”
“How come you haven't told me about them before?”
“Because there aren't any out here, so I didn't think it was important to tell you about the ones we can't get into contact with.”
“Why not start your own?” Tara asked.
“I tried that, but applications...well, I'll just say that they weren't rolling in by the minute.”
“How do the other organizations find these Flowers?” Tara asked. “Do they have members with the same ability as me?”
Vivian shrugged a shoulder and said, “I don't know. Maybe. I don't keep tabs on them, so I wouldn't know.”
“So how do they find the Flowers, then?”
“They have their methods,” Vivian said. “A lot of trail and error with picking out the right flower. Sometimes, they'll just burn entire gardens.”
“Are those the methods you used before you met me?” Tara asked, a wry half-smile on her face.
“Aside from burning everything in sight, yes,” Vivian said.
“How did you manage to find them without me?” Tara asked part in joke, part earnestly.
“Not that well—it was a test of my patience,” Vivian said, her eyes surveying the foliage around the dirt path.
Tara, seeing that Vivian had officially begun her hunt for the illusive flower, directed her attention to the right half of the forest floor. Though the park field was flat as a fine table, the forest terrain was rife with small bumps and dips like the blemishes and pores of a teenager's face. The skinny deciduous trees sprouted up from these faults at all sorts of angles. The forest floor was littered with a cloth of dead leaves that crunched beneath the soles of Tara and Vivian's shoes, the path only visible because of the leaves pushed aside by the traffic of the day's rovers. The tiny green leaves of clovers and other plants splashed color into the otherwise brown and gray forest floor, but there were no whites or purples of wildflowers.
“So, how long are you planning on hunting these flowers?” Tara asked.
“Until it kills me,” Vivian said with a smirk.
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